This might be the perfect shirt: black, with just enough of a sheen to impress without overdoing it. Yes, this is it, Stephen thought, holding it up before him. This should be just right. At least he hoped.
He lowered the shirt, ready to take it to the register, and if he'd held it up a moment longer he would have missed her. But he didn't.
Stephen lowered the shirt, and it was like an artist pulling the cloth from a sculpture. There she was. When he lowered the shirt, she came striding across his vision, the department store an impressionistic blur behind her. He stared helplessly.
She wore a pale yellow blouse and a brown skirt, which fell halfway between her knees and hips. Her legs were bare, so naked skin stretched to her ankles and was visible where her blouse fell open, one more button undone than most would have dared. Everything fit her perfectly, the clothes she wore seeming to caress her, seeming to brush against her skin lovingly. She wasn't sexy. She was sex. She was Sex, a heretofore unnamed Roman goddess.
Debra turned, having caught Stephen staring, but she only looked momentarily surprised, and then she smiled, her glossy lips parting just enough to reveal pearly tips.
Stephen looked down, and then up again, blushing, thinking he should look away—that would be the polite thing—but he couldn't.
She stopped.
Stephen's heart seemed to miss a beat.
Debra hesitated for only a second before going to him.
"You look like you need some help," she said.
Was she flirting with him? Just toying with him to make him squirm after catching him gawking at her? "I—I can't decide on a shirt," he said. "What do you think?"
She looked at the shirt he held up. "Let me see," Debra said, taking it from him. She held it against his shoulders and he almost flinched at her touch, so unexpected, but then so welcome. The position of her arms as she held the shirt made the space between the two buttons over her breasts open and he could see a hint of lace there—a white bra, he thought, but it was too much in shadow to tell for certain.
She looked down and then up again, smiling wider. She had caught him again. She pulled the shirt away and it fell to the floor.
"Whoops," she said, and bent to retrieve it. She picked it up just a heartbeat too slowly, and bent in such a way that it must have been intentional—she must have known that she was gifting him with a lingering view down her blouse. The creamy skin of her breasts curved into the valley created by her bra cupping her, lifting just so, and Stephen could see that the lace was not white at all but pink and quite sheer. In that blessed moment he thought he could see a hint of her areolas through the lace.
"I think the shirt's perfect," Debra said, "but you can't get a new shirt and not get new pants too. What's the occasion, anyway? A hot date?"
"Uh," Stephen laughed nervously, "a blind date actually. And my name's Stephen."